


Ronson

by astudyinfic



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, 00ronson, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, goodby fair ronson, we barely knew thee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3569537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinfic/pseuds/astudyinfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was never going to end in flower gardens and white picket fences.  Relationships like this never do.  They burn hot and fast, going out in a blaze of glory - or in this case, gun fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ronson

_"Ronson is down"_

The words reverberate through his mind, even as he struggles to get the man comfortable, stop the bleeding as best as he can.  Evac needs to move faster, the slowing heart rate under his finger tips tells James that much.  Ronson doesn't have the kind of time evac is going to need in order to get him to safety.

Fingers touch and eyes meet, an understanding passes between the two men.  This was never going to end in flower gardens and white picket fences.  Relationships like this never do.  They burn hot and fast, going out in a blaze of glory - or in this case, gun fire.  

Ronson understands, his eyes tell James that much.  He knows he won't survive.  He knows James is being told to keep going, to leave him for medical to deal with.  One more look, one more touch and James is gone again.  Losing himself in the adrenaline pulsing through his veins, each pounding step taking him away from the ache in his heart that never quite leaves now.  

They all die.  In the end, James is the man left standing.  There was Vesper.  Strawberry.  And now Ronson.  A good man with strong hands and a tender grip, a man who knew pleasure as well as pain, who could take James to the brink and hold him there longer than even James would have thought possible.

But that was over now.  Keep moving, keep fighting.  There is a mission to be completed and James is the one who can do it.  He's so close.  Just a few more steps.  A few more miles.  A few more days.  Once he's done, then he can mourn.  He can drink until the pain stops for one brief, shining moment.  A moment when James Bond doesn't care that he is alone, has more blood on his hands than any man should, blood of not just targets but also those he has loved.  Not that he loved Ronson, he tells himself.  Just mutual comfort.  That’s all it is.  But he still needs the time to mourn.

A gunshot from a friend takes that away and then he is falling.  
Falling towards Ronson.  
Towards the blessed stillness that is death.

Only he wasn't.  James opens his eyes not to the afterlife but a second attempt at life.  He tries to drown his memories in liquor.  He tries to drown them in women.  He tries to drown them in beating death once more.  But a news broadcast brings it all back and soon he is on the move again, back to the place that houses every bad memory James Bond has accumulated over his short but eventful life.

The man is lean where Ronson was bulky.  There is nothing that could be called bulky about the man James had pinned up against the wall except for that bloody parka he was wearing and perhaps that plush arse that gave so pleasantly under James' fingertips. The supply cupboard was nobody's ideal location but if James was going out again, he needed this first.  Someone who anchored him, someone who knew him intimately.  Someone who could carry on when James himself could not. 

It wasn't fair to the man, barely more than a boy really, but James knew that Q understood what they were doing.  A man like Q, he knew it all.  Information was his job and he would have memorized James' file before coming to see him.  He knew all James' inner workings.  Trust issues.  Alcoholism.  A hired gun and a well paid whore for the British Crown.  Q had to know this; he wouldn’t be an effective handler if he didn’t.  James knew that he knew this.  

So that made these moments acceptable, these frantic thrusts and desperate pants.  It wasn't wrong the way Q had eagerly accepted James into his body, had taken him too soon with not enough prep, nimble fingers that had never known a day of hard labour grasping at the lapels of his coat.  It wasn't wrong the way James relished the way the boy's mouth fell open as the agent sheathed himself inside, claiming this man as his.

His anchor.  
His rock.  
The voice in his ear and help on the other side of the radio.

Chances were James would not survive.  That was always the chance.  No double oh expected to survive a mission.  If you were aiming to survive, you would never have gotten this far.  But James soldiered on, never failing to return - sometimes battered, sometimes bruised, often without equipment - but he returned every time.  One day he wouldn't and he hoped this man, this boy, would mourn him.  If James' mission failed, Q’s duty would be to mourn, to remember the man like this, a man with normal passions, normal needs.  A man so desperate for a connection he would fuck his handler only minutes after meeting him in a janitorial closet of the National Gallery.  

Or, as James' luck seemed to go, Q would be the next of his lovers to fall victim to his job.  He would lose another and replace him with drink and then sex, before finally moving on to violence.  Each time, he lost a piece of himself and one day, there wouldn't be anything left to give.

Nodding to Q as he left the museum, James smirked at the slightly dazed look in the man's otherwise intelligent eyes.  Today was a good day.  There was still enough of James to give to the man behind him, the fraction of his heart that remained after years on this job handed over to the man he also would trust with his life.  As long as a part of James lived on in Q, then a part of Vesper, of Strawberry, of Ronson would live on as well.  And if James was to fail, then he too would live on in that soft spoken boffin with smart words and quick wit.  

Today was as good a day as any to die.  But maybe James had a reason to come back, one more time.


End file.
